There is probably no greater sense of responsibility than that connected with a military field commander sending troops into combat. While such propositions are profoundly hazardous by nature, soldiers have no choice but to rely on their commanders’ judgment to give them the best chance for success – and survival. For that commander, this awareness must be a formidable burden, and I would wager that knowing his subordinates “signed on” for the duty matters little. No one signs on to be cannon fodder.

In other realms of society, there are leaders who are similarly responsible to their subordinates, or those who have entrusted them with the responsibility of leadership, from corporate chieftains to schoolteachers. Hierarchy doesn’t necessarily denote superiority and subordination. In societies of laws – republics, for example – individuals are entrusted with the governance of people who are not technically their inferiors.

There is obviously a level at which a leader must cultivate some manner of philosophical detachment to the trials and tribulations of those supervised, commanded, or governed, or they would simply go mad. It is an imperfect world, and no leader can anticipate nor control every eventuality.

That said, there is a vast difference between this philosophical detachment and a cavalier deportment, in which the leader’s primary concern rests with his or her fame, fortune, or legacy, rather than those they serve. In fact, it is conventional wisdom within the institutions that develop those who aspire to leadership positions that this attitude is patently unethical, if not immoral, and that those who harbor it are failures by definition.

Nevertheless, those seeking fortune and glory often do rise to positions of power; indeed, they seek these positions, perceiving their ability to exploit them to their ends. The human suffering that results is of no moment; in fact, some of them even relish it.

In the bygone days before moral relativism, these people were called evil.

It has been acknowledged for centuries that leaders in the political realm are a different kind of bird. In modern republics, citizens came to accept that a certain level of duplicity (with which the average person found discomfort) was somehow necessary in politicians. This, combined with our desire for comfort and security, was the undoing of the American citizen.

Inasmuch as there have always been corruptible people, from America’s infancy a struggle commenced between them and those who sought to preserve the republic in its intended form. In the modern world, we still have singular tyrants, but the model of the socialist state also evolved. It is essentially an oligarchy, but it amounts to the same thing as having a dictatorship in place, bearing in mind the axiom about a certain substance that rolls downhill.

As far back as the 1950s, prominent communists asserted that liberalism was indeed communism on the installment plan, that it was the vehicle by which Americans would one day “wake up” and discover they were living under communism. This is close to being realized. Even those who have not yet come around to the understanding that our counterfeit, two-bit hustler of a president and his administration, along with seasoned radical agitators and deep-pocketed international socialists, are in the process of catalyzing a transformational civil war in America, the relative failure of this president (juxtaposed against the social and economic history of the U.S.) is blatantly apparent.

If America’s founders envisioned a political class arising – as opposed to representatives who employed politics as a function of their business of state – they certainly did not intend for her citizens to be ruled by them. This is, unfortunately, what has occurred. The process has been incremental, to be sure, but two occurrences have brought light to bear on strategies that had been long in the dark.

First, the global financial implosion brought on by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the U.S. gave rise to the current unemployment rate and attendant economic unpleasantries we’d not seen for decades. Second, the unmitigated amorality of the political class and their surrogates in media, banking and a few other areas was highlighted by an administration that opened the throttle full, in order to more quickly catalyze their end game. As a result, millions of Americans finally realized that we had gone from being governed by people of occasionally questionable ethics to being ruled by out-and-out criminals.

The pretense of respectability and good intentions on the part of the people in our government will be maintained by their propaganda arm, the establishment press. Though it is implausible to many, the current game plan is to saddle us with four more years of the counterfeit president, in order to realize objectives that transcend party lines.

Some months ago, I wrote that it was the job of Democratic leaders to speedily usher in a socialist state, and that it was the job of Republican leaders to feign having a desire to stop them. Americans at large will not act based upon this reality as long as they don’t realize the truth of it.